After I posted yesterday I remembered one more thing I wanted to share... We had friends in town from New York to do a reading at our theater (LATC) who are African American. In "Hope: Part II" there is 60's music, footage of JFK and MLK, stuff about the Cuban missile crisis, etc. It is a story about a Mexican-American family during the 60's and deals with universal themes of love, infidelity, poverty and more. The comment from them after seeing the show was that it was the first time they saw Latinos within an "American" context. In other words, it was new to them to see us as Americans who went through the same social, political and cultural experiences as everybody else in the country. So, the question is "Do most people see us as being outside of the "American" (and I'll talk about why I put the word in quotes at another time) experience?" A similar reaction came from other theater friends who came to see the play. We are collaborating with them on a musical and in previous discussions we attempted to talk about our work which is primarily about the U.S. Latino/a experience. In other words, Latinos who live here, whether they are born here or not. Before seeing "Hope: Part II" I'm not sure that they understood what we meant. But, afterward they were like, "Okay, I get it." That spoke volumes and confirms my belief that art and, in our case - theater, can help us understand each other and that is the reason I do it...
Okay, off the rehearsal... Will talk about "Charity: Part III" tomorrow. Promise...
